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User_Name13 OP t1_j3dnbq2 wrote

FTA:

"Patrice Rogers, executive director of the outreach program Stop the Risk, has the goal of helping people with addictions return to their families. Rogers’ activism was initiated after her husband became addicted to heroin and died in a motorcycle accident."

"She believes that concentrating harm-reduction and prevention services, such as mobile street clinics, in Kensington only encourages people with addictions to remain."

“We’re known as the Disney World for users. If you give free food and a free shower and free needles, why should you ever leave and return home?” Rogers added. “I used to feed 200 people, but I wasn’t helping them. I was enabling them."

"There is a deep weariness with the status quo in the community, but also a kind of wariness about who is served by the plan."

“We’ve suffered enough in Kensington,” said Gilberto Gonzalez, a community activist and student recruiter at Community College of Philadelphia. “There are so many levels of injustice. There is no other part of the city that allows people to put up tents and pile up trash.”

These folks nailed it.

The city is incentivizing drug addiction in Kensington by turning a blind eye to it.

The city is bending over backwards to enable drug addiction in a specific neighborhood in the city. It's completely fucked. I have no idea what Kensingston has done to deserve this treatment from the city.

They're cleaning up parks so they're nicer for the people nodding off in them all day.

I guess it'll make the drug dealer's work experience more enjoyable too. Now that they've got federal funds beautifying their drug den.

No amount of taxpayers funds can make a neighborhood plagued by drug addiction nice to live in.

They could've spent the whole $200 million on Kensington this one year and it still wouldn't address the root issue.

No one cares how nice the park a few blocks away is when there's a junkie trying to sleep on your front steps.

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schludy t1_j3glxjj wrote

Harm reduction should only be one part of the work that is done. There also has to be prevention, treatment, and enforcement.

The problem is, that nobody wants to spend any money on this, except on enforcement. The solution in Philly to let it all happen in one place doesn't work. But the solution is very expensive and would need a coordinated effort across the whole city, which would also lead to more heroin being consumed outside of Kensington

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pottyclause t1_j3n4n9s wrote

You seem to have thought about this topic a lot. Curious if you’ve read and disagree with how hard drugs are handled in Portugal. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/10/portugal-opioid

There’s lots of arguments and counter arguments with how to deal with large scale drug addiction. All I can say is, if the “solution” involves ignoring addicts, not providing safe materials, and continuing to plant addicts in jail….we’ll be looking at a propagation of how bad it is now.

The solution has to be well past cleaning the streets, having narcan, sanitary supplies. The solution has to be well past treating addicts and dealers as criminals.

Truth is, people of all creeds get hooked on opiates. Middle aged parents with a back injury. Businesses’ make millions legally selling these harmful drugs, yet teenagers that have no community support get sent to jail and end up killing each other for turf.

The big question, are we looking to create a better world or are we looking to create the impression of a better world. A world without addiction and a world where the addicts get shoveled off to the side appear imperceptible to a citizen on the street

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